Confirmed: Office 2010 will come in 32-bit, 64-bit flavors (Updated)

Microsoft has confirmed that Office 2010 will indeed be shipping in 32-bit and …

Last month, a very believable rumor started flying around in regard to Office 2010 shipping in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Check out ZDNet and Within Windows to see how the conclusion was drawn. Everything pointed to Microsoft finally offering a 64-bit flavor of its Office suite, previous versions of which have only shipped in 32-bit or 16-bit flavors. In an e-mail exchange with Ars today, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Office 2010 will be available in both flavors: "Yes, Office will have two separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Office 2010 will be the first to do this."

That's right, 64-bit versions of Windows will no longer have to emulate a 32-bit environment in order to run Office 2010, provided that the user has the 64-bit version installed. With 64-bit OS usage rapidly growing (thanks to Vista, if you're asking Microsoft), it's good to see that the next version of Office, expected to arrive sometime next year, will come in both versions. This should significantly help 64-bit adoption, not only because Office is one of the most-used products, but because other vendors (think Adobe or Sun) are likely to follow in Microsoft's footsteps when it comes to offering the next version of their products. For those wondering, Office 4.3 was the last 16-bit version, and Office 95 was the first 32-bit version (to match Windows 95).

Screenshots of the alpha version of Office 2010 leaked in January. Before Office 2010 arrives, though, Microsoft will ship Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 this month. The company is opening up a bit more in regards to the next wave of its Office-related products, so keep an eye out on more news in the next few days.

Update

It looks like Microsoft isn't just talking more about Office 2010, but Office 2007 as well. SP2 now has a more specific date, thanks to the Microsoft Update Product Team Blog: April 28. That's exactly two weeks from now, so try to sit tight!

32 Reader Comments

I would imagine this (64-bit, that is) would allow you to have Access databases larger than 2 GB. I tend to believe, though, that if you handling that much data, there are better tools than Access. I can't wait to try a beta.

Excel is the other one where I could see this being useful. It was one of the first apps I bumped into the 16-bit and the 64K GDI limitations back in the day (1993?). 2007 added support for some incredibly huge data sets.

Word and PowerPoint would probably be happy 32-bit apps for another decade or so .

Actually, Microsoft is just catching up with the 64 bit client apps. Adobe has already delivered a 64 bit version of Photoshop with the CS4 release. I just wish JAVA would move it with a 64 bit release for Vista. I am sick of running Limewire with Aero Basic.

Offic 14 will be a major boost though, considering the size of the Office family. There are about 14 members in the suite.

I'm clueless - Why does this matter? I use MSOffice everyday, and frankly, ignoring a few useful tweaks (millions of rows in Excel2007 being the most prominent), functionality hasn't changed in a decade. I see the ability to manage massive datasets, but as been bashed, there are already better tools.

Originally posted by FrisbeeFreek:I'm clueless - Why does this matter? I use MSOffice everyday, and frankly, ignoring a few useful tweaks (millions of rows in Excel2007 being the most prominent), functionality hasn't changed in a decade. I see the ability to manage massive datasets, but as been bashed, there are already better tools.

My guess is that the biggest driving factor is actually browser plugins, for things like SharePoint, CRM, CMS, etc. Enterprise stuff--home users won't care (and honestly neither will many enterprises). It's all so you don't have to run a 32-bit browser for some Office-integrated web apps and a 64-bit browser for others. But that's all just speculation.

I mostly hope that the new version of Office uses WPF throughout so that it is fully resolution independent. I'm not holding my breath though. I do like the idea of having a 64-bit Office though as it means they probably had to clean up a lot of their code base to get it to compile properly. I suspect it will also help on their transition to having 64-bit OS and applications only.

quote:

Originally posted by itlnstln:I would imagine this (64-bit, that is) would allow you to have Access databases larger than 2 GB.

Access databases tend to corrupt themselves if you just look at them funny. Why on Earth would you want to put anything more than just temporary data in an Access database?

Originally posted by adacosta:Actually, Microsoft is just catching up with the 64 bit client apps. Adobe has already delivered a 64 bit version of Photoshop with the CS4 release. I just wish JAVA would move it with a 64 bit release for Vista. I am sick of running Limewire with Aero Basic.

Office 2010 in 64 bit will be nice but I'm sure there's a tun of software out there that adds on to Office that will break when you install the 64bit version. That's assuming there is no 32bit backwards compatibility layer in there somewhere.

I wonder if Office 2010 will finally mean that you can install a 64bit Exchange Tools and still use Export-Mailbox adn Import-Mailbox. I'd assume that the PST export functionality of Outlook will be there and will be 64bit. Cheers for not having to load 32bit management tools to manage a 64bit server if that's the case.

Originally posted by Shades047:I just wish they'd put in the option to ditch the fucking Ribbon and use menus, like, I dunno, every other damn program on Earth?

Current interfaces won't be around forever. MS has been experimenting with and pushing Surface for a while now - a tweaked Ribbon interface seems more practical when you're using a touch screen. I can't see keyboards disappearing anytime soon, but Surface style touchscreens (eventually) becoming mainstream isn't being too unrealistic.

I think the Ribbon is MS trying to predict the future of user interfaces. I also think that even if they're wrong, they're not too far off and it it won't be hard for them to adapt going forward.

Originally posted by Shades047:I just wish they'd put in the option to ditch the fucking Ribbon and use menus, like, I dunno, every other damn program on Earth?

Current interfaces won't be around forever. MS has been experimenting with and pushing Surface for a while now - a tweaked Ribbon interface seems more practical when you're using a touch screen. I can't see keyboards disappearing anytime soon, but Surface style touchscreens (eventually) becoming mainstream isn't being too unrealistic.

I think the Ribbon is MS trying to predict the future of user interfaces. I also think that even if they're wrong, they're not too far off and it it won't be hard for them to adapt going forward.

MS Access is a decent interim db program for dept's outside of IS/IT. Not everyone has the privilage of running a SQL Server and maintaining it to their own specifications. Sometimes a department, EG: marketing, needs to be agile in tracking new projects (IE: all those initiatives that come down the pipe on a whim from someone higher up). You can quickly get an MS Access db going, automate it to spit out reports, track milestones, etc. MS Access gives non-IS dept's the power to do some real data management with something other than Excel.

However, I do agree that Access should not be used as a long-term solution for large projects. Unfortunately, most companies operate in a "it works, so it's good enough" mode, so if an MS Access db shows up to band-aid an issue or act as the initial "project manager" tool, it can turn into the perma-fix, which sucks.

I've found MS Access is very good as a reporting tool to tap SQL/Oracle db's and automate the running of data out as Excel reports with pivot tables and then automating Outlook to email those reports off to folks.

"Why don't you just use SQL Business Services to do all of that crap?"

Again, some of us work at companies that don't allow non-IS folks to use SQL tools. So, we have to do the best we can with what we have, and MS Office Apps are pretty powerful tools if you know how to leverage them.

quote:Originally posted by Shades047:I just wish they'd put in the option to ditch the fucking Ribbon and use menus, like, I dunno, every other damn program on Earth?

Your right, going back to the old way that had 90% of new feature requests actually being things that were there already in the software is much better simply because some power users dont like change (even though they can still use all of their shortcuts they remember and can easily get a file menu back up).

My ONLY gripe is that I should be able to break that ribbon into two peices and have one of each of the two peices on each side of the screen - it would make sense for SOME of the apps - word whne your not in full page or web view has lots of wasted speace vertically, but obviously excel often uses all of that same space so the ribbon is fine at the top. Just give me a choice!

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ANYWAY - just like Vista and 7 have security and performance improvements in the 64 bit versions, does this hold true for Office as well, at least in terms of secuirty?

EDIT - dint mean the attitude that can be implied when reading this post, i was just trying to match the original post, and systemswars.com is no longer a site I visit, but old habits are a pain in the ass to quit.